


If I cannot move heaven, I will raise hell.

by feralphoenix



Category: Homestuck, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-27
Updated: 2013-10-27
Packaged: 2017-12-30 14:17:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1019637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feralphoenix/pseuds/feralphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The steward in the old white city has two daughters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If I cannot move heaven, I will raise hell.

**Author's Note:**

> _(Because I dream of her too often_ – Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo.)

The steward in the old white city—the ruler of the linchpin in the defense of all that is still good, today and tomorrow and every day that the heirs of the ancient queen are vanished from the face of the earth—is a legend. A marquise: Tall and scarred and with a carved-marble sort of beauty, a smile that chills. It is said that in her youth, before she inherited the title of steward from her mother, she traveled the world with sword in hand and witnessed many wonders and made many conquests, branding her footsteps into the face of the world. That even then, she was beautiful and terrible to behold.

The steward in the old white city is toughened by a hundred thousand campaigns, and wears her plundered treasure strewn across her fingers in gaudy rings and draped about her chest and shoulders in ropes of pearls and jewels. Middle age has tempered her into something altogether more formidable, in the way it sometimes does for women. A widow in the way that spiders are widows, she sits upon the steward’s throne with every ounce of pride equaling the old queens in dusty history books.

The steward in the old white city has two daughters.

 Girl-children three years apart, the two girls resemble their mother in looks, but the steward and the people know that they have inherited but pale shades of her greatness. The steward and the people know it, and the daughters know it too.

The elder, and thus the steward’s heir, is in the words of her mother a boring and colorless thing, weighted down by years and years of lessons of courtly manners and history. She has great knowledge, yes. Skill with a sword, surely. Rudimentary knowledge of medicine. But there is no spark or flair to her. Only a tendency to drone on if spoken to. She is suitable perhaps to be someone’s figurehead: All the necessary skills to lead but none of the charisma.

(The elder is quick of wit and kind, a sturdy knight if not a bold and flashy one, with a tendency to land on her feet even when her tactics go awry; she is not dramatic and beautiful as her mother, having rather a rounder figure and a plainer face. But what she has that others have not is grace, or something infinitely close to it. It is just that she prefers the authority of superior knowledge to the authority of fear.)

(The elder dreams of being a hero, doing something bold and attention-grabbing, of heads bowing to her, murmured apologies, endless repetition of the phrase _“We were wrong about you and we are sorry. We were wrong.”)_

The younger, and thus the insurance, has none of her sister’s unremarkable poise. She is a gangly thing, crass and rebellious from the influence of the knights and pages and hostlers whom she spent her childhood underfoot. She has a number of skills unfit for nobility, like the perfect way to throw a handful of dice and how to win a fist fight in the dark. It is not just her mother that considers her to be an embarrassment, with her harebrained schemes and abrasiveness: Not boring per se but unsightly. There is something in her that has not grown or changed since childhood.

(The younger is made awkward with selfishness and bravado and she has inherited her mother’s taste for flash and dramatics; a pity, then, that she as often shoots herself in the foot as succeeds. She is taller and thinner than her sister, face carved like an underfed hunting dog. But though she has learned ruthlessness, even cruelty, there is a kindness in her yet—a rare earnestness.)

(The younger dreams of being a hero, of valorous victories and lives saved by her hands, of cheers and gentle arms and being hoisted high on the shoulders of admirers, endless repetition of the phrase _“We love you; we misjudged you. We love you.”)_

Unworthy heirs, the both of them, the steward has said (if not a thousand times, then a hundred at least). Only let them mature. Only let them discover a cruelty as deep as the ocean, let them learn to light a spark in the depths with flint and tinder. Force them to evolve into something like her in her younger days. Otherwise they are too dull and too fleeting to require her notice. In all likelihood, she will still be here long after they are not.

(The sisters are each other’s closest ally. Sometimes each other’s only ally. They sleep hand in hand and hate themselves for being unable to reach up to the level of their mother’s feet, the younger fighting for her sister’s honor in the streets, the elder arguing for her sister’s clemency at the high tables of supper while she and the other nobles are waited upon by a host of servants. They make each other fairy stories in the dark and gloaming, outlandish tales in which they both win glory and reverence and most of all their mother’s love and respect.)

 

 

In the drawn-out years as the girls creep towards adulthood, rumors stir in the old wastes of an Enemy regaining power. When, sure and unfaltering as injustice, the attack comes—the steward stands in her high white tower and organizes her campaign of defense. For be she cruel, be she cold and callous, know she not how to give a mother’s love—she is still among the ranks of Good.

Under their mother’s direction, the two girls take up arms as her highest generals. Though they have but pale shades of her brilliance, they are still closest of all to her ability level, and their hands are the most trustworthy she has in which to place her forces.

(The steward does not tell them so, judging that it would go to their heads. As it is, the elder is far too conservative, the younger far too reckless. Even after successful battles with few casualties, she takes time to berate them for their failures and shortcomings. They must be whittled ever closer to her own shape, or the white city will surely fall.)

The steward on her high throne, and her daughters in the fields of battle, keep the forces of the Enemy bottled back within the pass, never allowing them past the border fortress that fell before the white city had proper warning. Even when reinforcements from their allies never come. Even as the Enemy amasses greater and greater power, the steward and her daughters and the people of the city dig in their teeth and refuse to give in, for the sake of Good and for the lives of those without the power to fight. They do battle with the treachery of spiders, and the pride of scorpions.

One day the two girls unite their forces and reclaim the fortress, in a brilliant blitzkrieg that takes all the elder’s wisdom and all the younger’s courage.

The people of the white city celebrate. The steward on her high throne nods as if the victory were a given; if she were free to lead the army, she knows (and the girls know), she would have retaken the fortress months ago.

 

 

A messenger comes from far-away allies, calling for a representative, for some sort of Council.

The steward is the ruler. She cannot very well go out to distant lands and abandon her station, abandon her people and her glory. It stands to reason that one of the girls must go in her place.

And the truth is that she does not care which of them goes. She favors herself over the both of them, and so the decision is as of little consequence of her as is a coin toss.

 

 

(And that is exactly what the steward, the arrogant, conceited, cold old marquise, does: She pulls a weathered caegar from her silken purse and balances it on her thumb and flips it into the air, assigning each of her daughters a side: Heads, and it is the elder she will keep; scratch, and it will be the younger.)

 

 

(The coin lands. The world splits.)

  

 

_Heads (side-A)_

And the younger daughter takes her sword and the horn of her people, and she departs for the Council—a Council where she sits uncomfortably between representatives of many nations and many races, and one of those representatives is a woman of haggard beauty and chiseled fuchsia lips and the starred brow of a queen, and a scrawny girl-child brings forth a Ring, and there is a lot of nonsense about the former being the true heir to her city and the destruction of the latter’s gift being the only hope for the Enemy’s defeat.

The younger daughter raises her voice indignantly—this weapon ought to belong to her city, her knights who have lived and died and bled to keep these ignorant fools alive—but she is drowned out, and she sits and seethes and in the reflective surface of the Ring she can see her mother’s smile, hear her mother at last proclaim her love.

The child shouts above the din, announcing a reckless plan. It is accepted. One by one representatives of the peoples stand and pledge themselves as guards. The girl looks from the Ring to the tiny company. She can feel her chances of love and praise slipping away as surely as she could sense her fortune changing over a game of dice. Half-formed thoughts of persuading or stealing the Ring away racing in her mind, she stands, looking from one face to the next.

“If this is really what you Council people want, then Gondor will make it happen like we do for everything in this dumb war.”

But it is the children, the four youths who brought the treasure from a distant sunny place that has never known trouble but for the mischief of the local wood sprites, to whom her gaze strays. If this is what she has been protecting all along—if the world they have come from is one that is allowed to exist because of the sweat and blood she has spilled—then she wants to do right by them. Somehow. If only she has the confidence that she knew what the right thing is.

 

 

The distant scion of queens is as mannerless as her, and she would like that, but the terrible puns and the world-weary know-it-all attitude grate, and she knows that this usurper would take the throne from her mother. Surely, surely her mother deserves that place more than some unknown Ranger from faraway lands.

But the Ranger talks to her as if her opinion is worth something, as if they are _equals,_ and that is something that she has never experienced from anyone but her sister. The Ranger plays dice with her and swears when she cheats and doesn’t call her victories invalid. The Ranger laughs while she teaches the hopeless Shireling children the basics of how to take care of oneself, but not in a cruel way at all.

The children are themselves delightful—the two jokers more troublesome and more ineffably friendly than anyone she has ever met, the Ring-bearer herself as kind as she is shy, her gardener/self-appointed bodyguard steadfast and smart-mouthed.

She _likes_ these people—she would charge up and stab the Enemy himself for them—and she is dumbfounded and angry at herself, at the time she should be spending manipulating the Ring out of them for the white city but cannot bring herself to do it.

 

 

And then the gray witch vanishes into the chasm of the mines.

Whatever hope she had nearly found in her eight companions (eight, the best number) vanishes after her.

 

 

“Please, you aren’t in your right mind,” the girl Calliope shouts, scrabbling in the fallen leaves with her spindly little arms. There is nothing the child can do: She, the knight, is bigger and stronger and heavier, and the girl Calliope has always preferred to sit and watch the sword lessons than participate. “It’s the Ring that does this to you. Vriska, please, I know you are stronger than this.”

She hesitates just a moment, and when she brings her blade down the girl has already slipped the Ring over her finger, disappeared.

 

 

 _I’ve ruined this like I ruin everything,_ she realizes as the earth begins to echo with the marching steps of the Enemy’s troops. _My mother is right. I am worthless._

 

 

There is only one way to redeem herself, to end her paltry existence as a hero and not a villain, and if it is protecting those children she would have done it anyway.

“Vriskers, no,” squeaks the younger of the two. Her sister is mute, both hands clapped over her mouth in horror.

 She’ll never measure up to her mother even in the end, but even so, even failing in this, she will cut the enemy down until she can no longer stand.

 

 

“I fucked up,” she says through a mouthful of blood.

“Shoosh,” says the Ranger, patting a callused hand to her scraped-up cheek. “You shelly beach, you did fine. Calliope’s got away. She’ll get it done.”

“I cannot _believe,”_ she says, “you are making dumb puns at me while I’m dying.”

“Fuck you, my puns ain’t either dumb.” She raises both middle fingers, but her eyes are wet, and that’s enough. She never thought anyone but her sister would be willing to cry just for her. She’s so happy about that, she almost doesn’t care it’s come to this. Maybe if she were a better person, she’d be ashamed of herself for it, but she isn’t, and the Ranger’s face is dripping with tears even over her imperfect self.

“Just so you know, I’d have followed you,” she says, and closes her eyes. “My queen.”

 

 

_Scratch (side-A)_

And the elder daughter takes her sword and the horn of her people, and she departs for the Council—a Council where she sits uncomfortably between representatives of many nations and many races, and one of those representatives is a woman of haggard beauty and chiseled fuchsia lips and the starred brow of a queen, and a scrawny girl-child brings forth a Ring, and there is a lot of nonsense about the former being the true heir to her city and the destruction of the latter’s gift being the only hope for the Enemy’s defeat. 

The elder daughter raises her voice sternly—this weapon ought to belong to her city, her knights who have lived and died and bled to keep these ignorant fools alive—but she is drowned out, and she sits and seethes and in the reflective surface of the Ring she can see her mother’s smile, hear her mother at last proclaim that she is proud. 

The child shouts above the din, announcing a reckless plan. It is accepted. One by one representatives of the peoples stand and pledge themselves as guards. The girl looks from the Ring to the tiny company. She can feel her chances of love and praise slipping away as surely as she could sense her governesses’ displeasure. Half-formed thoughts of persuading or stealing the Ring away racing in her mind, she stands, looking from one face to the next. 

“If this is truly the will of the Council, then Gondor will see it done.” 

But it is the children, the four youths who brought the treasure from a distant sunny place that has never known trouble but for the mischief of the local wood sprites, to whom her gaze strays. If this is what she has been protecting all along—if the world they have come from is one that is allowed to exist because of the sweat and blood she has spilled—then she wants to do right by them. Somehow. If only she has the courage to follow her own schemes through.

 

  

The distant scion of queens is as mannerless as her sister, and she might find that endearing, but the terrible puns and the world-weary know-it-all attitude grate, and she knows that this usurper would take the throne from her mother. Surely, surely her mother deserves that place more than some unknown Ranger from faraway lands. 

But the Ranger talks to her as if her opinion is worth respecting, as if they are _equals,_ and that is something that she has never experienced from anyone but her sister. The Ranger rolls her eyes when she gets distracted talking about history, but never tells her to shut up. The Ranger laughs while she teaches the charming but unskilled Shireling children the basics of how to take care of oneself, but not in a cruel way at all. 

The children are themselves delightful—the two jokers more troublesome and more ineffably friendly than anyone she has ever met, the Ring-bearer herself as kind as she is shy, her gardener/self-appointed bodyguard steadfast and smart-mouthed. 

She _likes_ these people—she would charge up and stab the Enemy himself for them—and she is dumbfounded and angry at herself, at the time she should be spending manipulating the Ring out of them for the white city but cannot bring herself to do it.

 

  

And then the gray witch vanishes into the chasm of the mines. 

Whatever hope she had nearly found in her eight companions (eight, her sister’s very favorite number) vanishes after her.

 

  

“Please, you aren’t in your right mind,” the girl Calliope shouts, scrabbling in the fallen leaves with her spindly little arms. There is nothing the child can do: She, the knight, is bigger and stronger and heavier, and the girl Calliope has always preferred to sit and watch the sword lessons than participate. “It’s the Ring that does this to you. Aranea, please, I know you are wiser than this.” 

She hesitates just a moment, and when she brings her blade down the girl has already slipped the Ring over her finger, disappeared.

 

  

_I have ruined this just like I ruin everything,_ she realizes as the earth begins to echo with the marching steps of the Enemy’s troops. _My mother is right. I am worthless._

 

  

There is only one way to redeem herself, to try to repair the damage her folly did to the original plan, and if it is protecting those children she would have done it anyway. 

“Aranea, no,” squeaks the younger of the two. Her sister is mute, both hands clapped over her mouth in horror. 

She’ll never measure up to her mother even in the end, but even so, even failing in this, she will cut the enemy down until she can no longer stand.

 

  

“Well, that was a disaster,” she says, and swallows a mouthful of blood. 

“Shoosh,” says the Ranger, patting a callused hand to her scraped-up cheek. “You shelly beach, things’ll still turn out fine. Calliope’s got away. She’ll get it done.” 

“I cannot _believe,”_ she says, “you are making ridiculous puns while I’m dying.” 

“Fuck you, my puns ain’t either ridiculous.” She raises both middle fingers, but her eyes are wet, and that’s enough. She never thought anyone but her sister would be willing to cry just for her. She’s gratified by that, and mortified all the same. She has never been anything but plain and boring, and no one will ever find her admirable, but the Ranger’s face is dripping with tears even over her imperfect self. 

“I would have followed you, my captain,” she says, and closes her eyes. “My queen.”

 

 

 

The steward and her daughter find the corpse on a boat, split halves of the once-proud horn clasped in its hands.

The heart of that cold-blooded, hot-blooded, iron-blooded woman roils with confusion, and with rage—and finally with grief.

She had loved that child. She had never known.

 

 

 

_Heads (side-B)_

The elder daughter stumbles upon the pair of them when she and her people are on patrol. They are very young and very battered, and either they are the Enemy’s spies or they are very much lost.

It is pitifully easy to get the drop on them—wouldn’t spies be more aware of their surroundings?—and she orders them brought blindfolded with hands tied to the cave she and her soldiers use as their hideout.

The bigger girl has the strained look of someone who has lost a lot of weight and built a lot of muscle in a short time, and the littler girl is thin as a rail with ugly bruises under her eyes. They deny being spies, but will not explain the errand that brought them so near to the Enemy’s territory. The bigger girl spews a lot of vile words and creative threats, but there isn’t any real harm in her; she’s a kitten puffing up to look bigger in front of dangerous foes. The elder daughter recognizes this and folds her hands. She is patient. She can wait.

It comes together in bits and pieces and riddles and she learns of the treasure they carry in the end. Her hands quiver; she locks them behind her back to shake where no one may see them, like her heart.

The girl like dried tinder confesses, and lists the companions she left behind. The elder daughter ceases to pay attention, stuck on one name.

“You were a friend to Vriska?”

The girl looks down. “Yes. Or at least, for my part.”

“It would grieve you, then, to know that she is dead?”

The skeletal head whips up, listless brows coming down. Green eyes regain a spark. “Dead? How?”

The elder daughter smiles, thin and cold. “I was hoping that you would tell me.”

 

 

She orders them brought back to the white city, for her mother. Her sister is gone, and her mother has said time and again that she wishes their places were exchanged. She cannot bring her sister back, but perhaps if she can bring them there, she will be able to live again—with the people, with herself.

The bigger girl fights her captors even as her companion, the Ring-bearer, follows along listlessly.

“You wanna know why your sister died?” she snarls. “She tried to take the Ring from Callie! She tried to steal it, after swearing an oath to protect her! The Ring drove your sister mad!”

The elder daughter clenches her fists, raises her chin. They move towards the fortress under the cover of nightfall, wary of enemy soldiers.

 

 

“Bring them to my mother,” she announces. “Tell her that Aranea sends a mighty gift.”

 

 

The plan, her one chance for glory, is dashed to nothing when a wraith attacks. She draws her sword, leads her troops, and through the chaos she does not notice that the two girls have gone missing until the thin little Ring-bearer appears in the corner of her vision, standing on a ledge, staring blankly up at an approaching wraith with the Ring on its chain held out.

The elder daughter runs. She runs as hard and as fast as she has ever dared, abandoning every pretense of dignity and manners that kept her steps even and soft; the Ring-bearer’s attendant arrives to tackle her charge to the ground a moment before she, knight-commander and dutiful daughter, leaps to slash at the offending wraith’s monstrous mount. She severs the web of one wing, sending the creature shrieking and spinning to crash on the rocks below.

When she turns, the Ring-bearer is curled up crying and hopeless in the arms of her friend.

 

 

“What are we holding on to, lovely?” she says in a voice as thin and weak as a dried-up leaf, as though this is the continuation of some conversation the elder daughter has not heard.

“That there’s still some good in this world,” says the other girl. Her eyes are rimmed with red and the knees of her leggings are torn, her skin scraped open. “And it’s worth fighting for.”

 

 

 _Oh,_ thinks the elder daughter, and she slides her sword back into its sheath.

 

 

Her deputy warns her that her mother will be furious.

“It’s true that I’ve always wanted her to be proud of me,” she says. “But having other people respect me won’t mean anything if I can no longer respect myself.”

 

 

 

 _Scratch (side-B)_

The younger daughter stumbles upon the pair of them when she and her people are on patrol. They are very young and very battered, and either they are the Enemy’s spies or they are very lost and very stupid besides. 

It is pitifully easy to get the drop on them—wouldn’t spies be more aware of their surroundings?—and she orders them brought blindfolded with hands tied to the cave she and her soldiers use as their hideout. 

The bigger girl has the strained look of someone who has lost a lot of weight and built a lot of muscle in a short time, and the littler girl is thin as a rail with ugly bruises under her eyes. They deny being spies, but will not explain the errand that brought them so near to the Enemy’s territory. The bigger girl sneers and says things like “Too bad you douchebags that keep sayin’ you’re fighting the Enemy can’t let other people doin’ the same thing get on with it without trying to meddle. Wow, would he be happy to know he’s got a friend in you!” But there isn’t any real harm in her; the younger daughter knows bravado when she sees it. She raises her eyebrows and says “Rude!” but otherwise pays the girl’s antics no mind. 

It comes together in bits and pieces and riddles and she learns of the treasure they carry in the end. Her eyes widen: To think that such a thing was under her nose the entire time. 

The girl like dried tinder confesses, and lists the companions she left behind. The younger daughter ceases to pay attention, stuck on one name. 

“You were Aranea’s friend?” 

The girl looks down. “Yes. Or at least, for my part.” 

“And you’re not sad at all that she’s dead?” 

The skeletal head whips up, listless brows coming down. Green eyes regain a spark. “Dead? How?”

The younger daughter smiles. Her nose creases and turns the expression into a sneer. “And here I was hoping you were gonna tell me.”

  

 

“Look,” says the younger daughter, even as the self-appointed guardian glares. “I wanna see the white city restored to its old glory as much as anybody. I’d do it with my own hands if I thought I could. But no matter how much of a stupid dumb flighty broad I am, I know better than to try to make that happen with that Ring! You said it twisted Aranea’s mind. Well, she’s done more for me than the white city ever did. Maybe the whole city’d finally love me if I saved them with this thing, but the thing is, _she_ already loved me. I’ll believe you all special for her sake.” 

“You really expect us to believe that,” says the Ring-bearer’s angry gardener. 

“Knights of Gondor don’t lie,” says the younger daughter. “No, okay, I lie all the time, just not about stupid bullshit. The Enemy’s made it his job to shit on women everywhere. Now that I know what that Ring is, I wouldn’t pick the janky thing up if it was laying free to take in the middle of the highway.” 

“You’re in this to be the big hero,” says the gardener. “What’s in it for you to do the really heroic thing instead of the thing that’ll make everybody sing your praises? It’s not like anyone will actually _know.”_

“I’ll know,” says the younger daughter. “You’ll know. My soldiers will know. I have had to have Aranea save me one too many times after tripping loserflags! Trust me to know an obvious one when I see it, okay.”

 

 

 

 

 

Later—far away in the land of the dead—two girls stand hand in hand with their feet in the surf, watching as the white witch and a Shireling girl ride to the white city. Their eyes are blank, pale with ghostlights.

“Man, we really sucked at this,” says the younger sister. “The Ring was such an obvious-ass trap and yet we still walked right into it. Your version of me is right, we should’ve known better.”

“We did what we could,” says the older, leaning into her sister’s side. “Maybe the others needed to watch us fail, so that they had something they could use to fight the pressure Mother’s always put on us all.”

“Are you sure you’re not just saying that to save our pride, here?”

The elder sister smiles bitterly. She closes her eyes and tilts her head back, her short tangled hair brushing her pale face like cobwebs. “And what’s wrong with that? I would hate to think that we failed Gondor and each other outright. At least this way we can tell ourselves we had meaning.”

The younger sister makes a face.

“I’m more worried about your version of me than anything,” the elder sister goes on. Even death, it seems, is not enough to stop her from being long-winded. “It took me so much longer than you to do the right thing.”

“I don’t blame you,” the younger says. “I know how you felt. Your version of me must’ve had a hard time choosing to do what she did, no matter what she said. All our lives, we’ve been the only ones looking out for us. This is kind of a shitty situation to prioritize yourself! But I know why it’s instinct.”

“Well,” the elder says. “Eventually the ridiculous fish princess and the others will make their way to Gondor, just like Jade and Nepeta. When she gets there, she’ll help us do the right thing and turn everything around. The Enemy won’t know what’s hit him.”

“It would’ve been nice to be the one to stick a sword in his ugly mug personally. But, like—I guess if it’s this lot, they can take care of you for me. And maybe finally do something about our mom.”

“And they will take care of you for me, as well,” says the elder sister, smiling. “Though it seems to me that you have grown up quite a lot, and you will need less looking after than me. When everything is over, and they make their own way to this place—we can tell them that they did well. Someone ought to let them know that they’ve done good.”

The younger sister reaches out into the hazy air, as if to grab a fistful of sea.

“I’m gonna miss being alive!” she says.

Her sister nods beside her. “I suppose I will, too. But this is a good place, surely. And there will be much to learn here.”

“I think you mean, it’s our next great adventure,” her sister corrects her.

“I suppose,” says the elder.

They turn away from each other to roll their white eyes where their sister will not see it, and—

“Well, let’s go,” they say at the same time, and smile in different directions.

They let go of each other’s hands only for as long as it takes to turn around.


End file.
